Varsity bosses seek power revolution

VERY soon, at the click of the mouse button, university administrators, students, parents and others will be able to access a vast amount of information about students, programmes, accreditation status, researches, professors, and facilities in public and private universities in Nigeria thanks to the online accreditation portal of the National Universities Commission (NUC).

However, vice-chancellors, directors of academic planning, and ICT directors of some of the universities are calling on the Federal Government to improve electrical power supply which has the potential to undermine the uploading process.

Education Minister, Prof Ruqayyat Ahmed Rufa’i and the NUC Executive Secretary, Prof Julius Okojie both said at the launch of the portal at the University of Calabar (UNICAL) penultimate Friday that the project has the potential of improving the world ranking of Nigerian universities because of greater visibility, check multiple employment of lecturers by different universities, check over enrolment of students and provide platform for comparison.

The portal will also generate accreditation reports for the teams; can be used for certificate verification, and provide details of accreditation requirements.

Already, over 38 universities have entered their staff and students’ records into the portal, which is a project of the National Universities Commission Database (NUCDB) created in conjunction with GUCCI CHIS Nigeria Ltd as technical partners.

With the portal, Okojie said NUC will be able to regulate the university system more effectively as the agency will be alerted when programmes are due for accreditation. He is also confident that it will check if accreditation teams work according to the rules.

He added that the database will improve the quality of research output from the Nigerian University System as it will encourage cross-disciplinary research.

“We want the Minister of Education to sit in her office and know the number of professors, the number of students. If we have such database you will be amazed the number of professors you can collaborate with on research,” he said.

In her speech, Prof Rufa’i said the project would put Nigerian ivory towers on the world map and urged university administrations to cooperate to make it work.

She said: We must stop lamenting that Nigerian universities are poorly rated on the African continent in particular and the world in general and start doing something about it. We know that the poor rating is not due to a lack of the required intellectual capacity, but basically due to poor management of the resources in our institutions. One of the results of this is low visibility of the institutions. This Portal is therefore a bold step towards building world class universities in Nigeria.

“I understand that the NUC-Online Programme Accreditation Portal offers a unified system in the management of Nigerian universities for enhanced academic structure and visibility. With deliverables such as the automation of database of all universities in Nigeria with link to the National Universities Commission (NUC), the management of our University System is certainly not to be the same again.

“I appeal to all our universities and stakeholders to embrace this laudable initiative, which has opened up new frontiers of engagement for the benefit of all stakeholders in the university education sub-sector and the general public. They should also upgrade their system in order to enjoy the full benefits of the Portal and co-operate, fully, with NUC so as to make its oversight function less onerous to make it a success.”

To cooperate with the NUC, university administrators urged the Federal government to improve power supply, while they want the technical partners to improve the ease at which universities can upload the required information onto the portal.

Speaking at a one-day workshop on online universities programme accreditation that held after the inauguration, many of the administrators also raised their concerns about format of arranging the information, uploading files and other issues with the NUC Deputy Director of Undergraduate and Institutional Accreditation, Dr Noel Saliu, and the CEO of GUCCI CHIS, Hon Paul Adingwupu.

Osayi Ogboro, Planning Officer at the University of Benin (UNIBEN) said power supply must be addressed since it can affect the data uploading process. He also said universities will need help in upgrading their ICT infrastructure.

“It is a good idea but they sill have a lot of work in fine tuning it to meet university needs. The challenges that we will face include the power supply. Right now it is very erratic. If light goes and you are in the middle of uploading a file, there will be problem. Also universities need to develop their ICT infrastructure,” he said.

Similarly, Director of Quality Assurance and Productivity at the Federal University of Technology, Minna (FUTMINNA), Prof Adai Ibrahim said NUC needs to provide technical support for the universities to improve their ICT facilities and be able to check false data inputs

“There should be technical support people from the NUC side so that when wrong data is sent to them they should be able to identify it online. Universities need to improve their information infrastructure to send and access information. If I am trying to send data and the internet is not reliable, it will cause delays,” he said.

On his part, Adingwupu assured the university representatives that their concerns about the functioning of the portal will be addressed. He added that there are plans to helpassist universities acquire the requisite ICT infrastructure.